General Discussion Thread

[Oskutin]

Best of luck kex!
My names are the same way: a was-common old-fashioned name that people always forget or mix up, a noun for a middle name (if I wanted to seem really cheesy and overly-posh I could hyphenate my first and middle names and oh my gosh it'd sound like a fanfic's Mary Sue or something. Or worse, a fem!UK name O__O the horror.) and then my last name. My surname is pretty common, easy to pronounce, but that doesn't stop some people misspelling it or saying it totally wrong XP
I see my last name used a lot for the last names of villains in kids media.... ;___; whyyyy?
Hehe I know the feeling!
Wow! That's really cool! having a unique last name....*dreams*

Then you can go and submit some forms to change to unique name

[OrigamiOwl]

Then you can go and submit some forms to change to unique name

Hmmm...I'm actually pretty content with my innocent-yet-villainous name ;3

[hushpiper]

My first name is not uncommon, but its spelling is--it's only "Alicia", but with an S instead of the C. (Not gonna spell it out due to search engines and their crawly ways. ) For some reason the S trips people up a lot, so nobody seems to know how to pronounce it around here.

My maiden name is common as dirt here, and nobody who speaks English without an accent ever had trouble with it. My married name, however, is Ukrainian--and it's rare enough that as far as I'm aware, everyone who has it here in America (and Puerto Rico to a lesser extent--the family went from the Ukraine to Puerto Rico to Florida and spread out from there) is related to my husband to one degree or another. Which is kinda cool, I think.

[Piney]

Haha, oh dear, I keep tangling myself in! But the style is kind of androgynous so I guess I think it looks female because I know you're female? Is it you who've drawn it? I have not been to the art threads much.

Yep, 'tis I who drew it.

My last name is of Scottish origin (I'm 1/4 Scottish). I don't know how common it is in Scotland (probably a lot more), but there are probably only about a thousand people with it in the US. It's a noun and a verb (my sister's "enemies" in elementary school liked to insert "will" in between her first and last names), and has another meaning in Scotland that's much more pleasant. My middle name is also the name of the Scottish clan my family's descended from.

[curiosity]

I'm wondering how common is it not to have a middle name at where you come from? And how many middle names can you have, and are there any traditions connected with giving middle names, or are they given just like first names, with no special significance? I am very curious how is it managed all around the world, because we don't have middle names - just a first name, a patronymic and a surname (but nowadays some eccentric parents can give their child several names, yet according to Ukrainian law there cannot be more than three).

[Piney]

I'm wondering how common is it not to have a middle name at where you come from? And how many middle names can you have, and are there any traditions connected with giving middle names, or are they given just like first names, with no special significance? I am very curious how is it managed all around the world, because we don't have middle names - just a first name, a patronymic and a surname (but nowadays some eccentric parents can give their child several names, yet according to Ukrainian law there cannot be more than three).

In the US, you can have as many middle names as you want. Pretty much everyone has a middle name. I think usually middle nanes are given because they sound good with the first name, but sometimes it'll be a family name (like the name of your great-grandmother) or like in my case, where it's a tradition for a specific middle name to be passed to every first-born child. (Although technically I'm not the firstborn by two minutes)

[hushpiper]

I'm wondering how common is it not to have a middle name at where you come from? And how many middle names can you have, and are there any traditions connected with giving middle names, or are they given just like first names, with no special significance? I am very curious how is it managed all around the world, because we don't have middle names - just a first name, a patronymic and a surname (but nowadays some eccentric parents can give their child several names, yet according to Ukrainian law there cannot be more than three).

I have had no middle name, which is quite unusual here in America. My parents were blessed (*snerk*) with five daughters and no sons, so they didn't give me a middle name in the hopes that when I got married, I would take my maiden name as my middle name--just so that the surname would pass on. Which I did, but lemme tell you, my maiden name is not well suited to being a middle name. My full name sounds clunky as all get out. XD

[Fenris]

My surname isn't particularly uncommon in Sweden, but it is rarer in Norway (my family originally came over from Sweden in the 19th century to work on Norwegian railways). Amusingly enough, its not the actual surname my family had when we moved and I think they tried to get a new one for Norway, without knowing said surname isn't used here. They did at least Norwegianify the 'ö' to 'ø'. Meanwhile, my middle name is Norwegian (the surname of my mothers' family) and my first-name is Danish (although is common throughout Scandinavia, it uses the Danish spelling), so my total name and ancestry I can only really describe as 'Scandinavian'.

Foreigners have great difficulty pronouncing my name though, even my first name which isn't that strange compared to anglo names. The only time someone from outside of Scandinavia has pronounced my name correctly on the first try, was a Zimbabwean I met in a pub in London a couple years back. I've yet to hear a foreigner pronounce my surname correctly.

[mithrysc]

To quote hushpiper, my surname (and its zillion variations) is also as common as dirt. My middle name is sort of unique in that it wasn't just chosen because it sounded nice/ something else got chosen for my first name, but it's a name my parents chose in the language of their/ my ethnicity (how vague can I get, right?).

Also, unrelated, could we please please keep superfluous conversation out of the Introduction thread? Welcomes are at least related, but in the last few pages unrelated discussion has started taking over the introductions.

[Piney]

Also, unrelated, could we please please keep superfluous conversation out of the Introduction thread? Welcomes are at least related, but in the last few pages unrelated discussion has started taking over the introductions.

I second this, I got quite annoyed about it during the whole personality discussion. ((I know I'm an offender; I was going to go no further than my last comment, sorry.))

[JoB]

Break a leg, or whatever Germans say!

Hals- und Beinbruch!

(Yeah, breaking only a leg ain't up to our standards. )

I'm wondering how common is it not to have a middle name at where you come from? And how many middle names can you have, and are there any traditions connected with giving middle names, or are they given just like first names, with no special significance?

Germans don't have "middle names", they have one or more first names (Vorname(n)) and one - any one - of those is selected to address the person in conversation (Rufname), assumed that you're allowed to call him by first name in the first place, of course.

Over the last generations, the trend's apparently been to cut back on the number of first names. Case in point, my dad IIRC had more than half a dozen first names in his birth certificate, was forced down to four to fit them on modern ID documents, and a year or so back, the authorities stopped allowing more than just the Rufname into the machine-readable documents altogether. (Pain in the rear to board a flight when you had to replace your passport after booking and "lost" half of the name your ticket's made out to in the process.) I have two, "my own" and one matching my godparent's Rufname, but it needs to get quite formal/bureaucratic before I use the "middle" one. Honoring various relatives was a common scheme to select multiple first names for your child.

Then there's the occasional folks who consider the opportunity of naming their child an open invitation to become a performance artist or stand-up comedian, of course ...

[Oskutin]

I don't have middle name(s), but my first name has two parts connected with '-', don't know/remember proper english term for that.

[Lenny]

Most people I know here have middle names, and both my parents do. In my mother's family, usually the middle name is the name of a grandparent, great aunt/uncle, or an ancestor like that. Or it's swapped over, the first name is the name of a grandparent/etc. and the middle name is something more unique (or ... yet another ancestor). The eldest boys usually have their grandfather's name or similar - in my family, it's been variations of the Afrikaans version of "Christopher" for generations now. And since my family over there grew very large and spread out over those generations, there are hundreds of people with variants of the Afrikaans "Christopher"... I've got cousins with that name... second cousins... third cousins... even people who are totally unrelated except for being some branch of the family 100 years back have it... it's all over the place... ;;_;;

*cough* Back to middle names, I don't have one, and neither does my sister. My brother, other sister, and both parents do, and as far as I know, all South African family does. The Dutch family, however... it seems, this generation doesn't bother with middle names. All my uncles have one, and grandparents, too, but my cousins don't. And even those that do have middle names, it's rarely anything to do with family members - just cool names.

[Eich]

Listening to this song again...

Just taught my roommate a little guitar for the last time this year.  He's going to go and take care of some family stuff next semester, instead of doing school.  I've only known him for a few months, but I like him a lot, and he just said he's felt like he's known me for a long time...  We're gonna miss him here.   :'(

[OrigamiOwl]

Listening to this song again...

Just taught my roommate a little guitar for the last time this year.  He's going to go and take care of some family stuff next semester, instead of doing school.  I've only known him for a few months, but I like him a lot, and he just said he's felt like he's known me for a long time...  We're gonna miss him here.   :'(

Aw :'( Could you guys still keep in touch with phone numbers or email?